a. and sb. [It.:—L. furiōsus: see FURIOUS a.]
A. adj. (Music.) See quot. 1825. Also quasi-adv.
1823. Crabb, Technol. Dict., Furioso (Mus.) or con furia, Italian, signifying furiously, or with vehemence.
1825. Danneley, Encycl. Mus., Furioso, denotes a quick movement, but principally that species of movement which requires a wildness of character in the execution.
B. sb. A furious person. (Also furiosa fem.)
Presumably suggested by the title of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, II. § 202 (1693), 218. A violent Man, and a Furioso was deaf to all this.
1710. Age of Wonders, vi. in Wilkins, Pol. Ball. (1860), II. 69. The furiosas of the Church Come foremost like the wind.
1726. De Foe, Hist. Devil, II. viii. (1840), 290. He gave Oliver the protectorship, but would not let him call himself king, which stuck so close to that furioso, that the mortification spread into his soul, and it is said he died of a gangrene in the spleen.
1784. Lett. to Honoria & Marianne, I. 74. I have heard one of these pitiful furioso’s raving to a most amiable woman.
